Sep 22, 2014 | Blog, Nutrition
Just like all carbohydrates, fats and proteins are not created equal from a fat loss or nutrient density standpoint, the same is true for vegetables. Yup, some vegetables are far more healthy than others. There is a particular group of vegetables that are health and nutrient POWERHOUSES. They can facilitate fat loss, boost the immune system, balance hormones and much more. Which vegetables are these? Cruciferous vegetables.
Cruciferous vegetables should become a daily staple in your diet for health, longevity and fat loss. Seriously. Every day. They include veggies such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts and bok choy. I routinely eat 3-5 cups of cruciferous vegetables every day and here are a few reasons why.
- They are high in fiber
Because they are a great source of fiber, they’ll help you stay fuller longer, curbing your hunger and reducing your cravings. They can also help to promote bowel regularity.
- They are low calorie
Eating 3-5 cups is no big deal because cruciferous veggies are so low calorie. You can enjoy them to your heart’s content, relying on them for snacks, meal fillers or to help satisfy your hunger and cravings without upsetting the caloric apple cart.
- They are natural estrogen detoxifiers
We’ve talked before about how there are good forms of estrogen and bad forms. When we have too much estrogen that can really impair our ability to burn fat (among other things). Compounds within cruciferous vegetables help to bind and eliminate the bad estrogens, bringing down your total estrogen load.
- They help manage blood sugar and moderate insulin release
Numerous clinical studies have shown that consuming cruciferous vegetables, likely in part due to their high fiber content, helps to reduce blood sugar and therefore manage the insulin response. This allows you to burn fat, as compared to having high blood sugar and elevated insulin, which prevents the ability to burn stored fat.
- They are anti-inflammatory
Consuming cruciferous vegetables reduces systemic inflammation. This not only reduces cortisol, a stress hormone that can slow fat loss, but it also protects your overall health. Systemic inflammation is the starting point for almost all chronic disease.
- They reduce your risk for cancer
Compounds in cruciferous vegetables known as glucosinolates break down into isothiocyanates and other protective compounds when you chew. Isothiocyanates have been shown in repeated studies to protect your cells from DNA damage, neutralize carcinogens, induce cell death in unhealthy (cancerous and precancerous) cells, and inhibit tumor formation.
- Uh, they’re really yummy! ‘Nuf said.
Here are some of my absolute favorite cruciferous vegetable recipes, but I also love to enjoy them steamed or sautéed with a little coconut oil or bacon fat!
The Slim Palate’s Broccoli Soup
PaleOMG’s Mexican “Rice” Bowls with Cauliflower Rice
Fed & Fit’s Detox Salad (featuring cabbage)
Nom Nom Paleo’s Brussels Sprouts and Bacon
Play around with recipes until you find a way to eat these nutritional powerhouses that you absolutely love! Eating your veggies isn’t something to suffer through – it’s something to enjoy!!
Sep 19, 2014 | Blog, Nutrition
There’s lots being said about gluten these days, huh? It seems like most people are wondering if they should eliminate gluten or not and the grocery aisle of gluten-free products is growing by the second! But what IS gluten and who needs to be concerned about it?
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barely, rye and other grains. Due to modern food processing, it’s also in most oat products. We tend to think of those foods as carbohydrates, and they are, but they also contain about 10-15% protein, most of which comes from gluten.
It is estimated that more than 1/3 of the population is sensitive to gluten and this sensitivity manifests in a number of different ways. You might experience headaches, acne, stomach discomfort, mood swings, bloating, joint pain, fatigue or menstrual irregularities. On the other hand, you might not notice any physical symptoms even though gluten may be triggering silent, symptomless inflammation throughout your body that might not produce symptoms for years!
Some people avoid gluten for health reasons. Others avoid gluten to accelerate their fat loss goals. Today I want to talk about some of the reasons you might want to consider eliminating gluten to help support your fat loss efforts. Here are a few ways gluten can seriously slow your progress:
- Gluten may lead to or worsen insulin resistance
Insulin resistance increases hunger, cravings and fat storage. Insulin is one of the most important hormones in the fat-loss process and it can either work for you or against you. Consuming gluten allows insulin to to fight against all your fat loss efforts.
- Gluten encourages leptin reistance
Leptin is the hormone responsible for letting your brain know when you’re full and don’t need to eat anymore. Gluten encourages your body to not be as responsive to the messages coming from leptin, which can lead to insatiable appetite and deafness to satiety signals. To successfully lose fat, your want your body to be VERY sensitive to leptin signals to keep hunger at bay and be able to easily feel satisfied after eating.
- Gluten-containing foods cause blood sugar spikes
Gluten-containing foods are generally high carbohydrate. This leads to rapid surges in blood sugar and associated insulin spikes. This causes the vicious cycle of carbohydrate cravings, energy crashes and fat storage. Stay far away from this cycle by avoiding these carbohydrate bombs.
- Gluten triggers inflammation
What does inflammation have to do with fat loss? It causes a stress response in your body. These stress hormones do NOT favor fat loss. Not only is inflammation a real concern as it relates to overall health, it also makes fat loss far more challenging.
Are you curious to know if you’re sensitive to gluten? The best way to find out is to commit to eliminating it from your diet for 7 days and see how your body responds. After 7 days, begin to re-introduce it slowly and note changes in your mood, energy, water retention, joint comfort, skin health, mental clarity and stomach comfort.
What can you eat if you want to eliminate gluten? A lot!
- Eggs
- Meat/Fish/Poultry/Game
- Dairy
- Vegetables
- Fruit
- Nuts/seeds
- Fats/oils
A word of warning: if you want to lose fat, stay away from processed foods. I don’t care if they say “gluten free” – if it’s processed, you shouldn’t be eating it everyday. There is a ton of gluten free junk food out there…it’s still junk food, gluten free or not.
Want to learn a little more about gluten? Click here for a great overview of gluten and what it can do inside your body, whether you feel it or not!
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Sep 5, 2014 | Blog, Nutrition
Give me just one second while I climb up onto my soap box….
Y’all. We’ve been lied to. For decades. We have the WRONG impression about dietary fat. Like, really, really wrong. Ready for the cliff notes version of the truth? EATING FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT. In fact, not eating ENOUGH fat might be a big part of the reason you’re gaining fat. No joke. I’m totally serious. I’ve gotta clear this up. These common misconceptions make me so crazy.
It’s really unfortunate that fat on our body is referred to by the same word as dietary fat in foods we eat. That, and a lot of misinformation, has led us to believe that dietary fat leads to an accumulation of body fat.
I’m going to ask you to think about something differently. So, a gram of fat has more calories than a gram of carbohydrate or protein, right? A gram of fat has 9 calories whereas a gram of protein or carbohydrate has only 4. That’s one of the big reasons people think fat is “fattening”. More calories = more weight gain (misleading, but a common thought nonetheless). The problem is that we’re thinking about it alllll wrong. Bear with me while I attempt to clear this up. A calorie isn’t some magical thing that piles up and makes you look fatter. Calories are how we measure the energy potential in food. One more time just because its worth repeating: calories are how we measure the energy potential of a particular food.
So what, right? Basically, dietary fat delivers more than twice as much energy to our bodies than protein or carbohydrate!! That’s a GOOD thing! That means that we can fuel our body for longer on less than we can if we just stuck to protein or carbs.
Research has shown that when you eat a low fat diet you actually increase the activity of certain enzymes that encourage your body to store more fat. On the flip side, ample dietary fat has been shown to increase the activity of enzymes that help you burn stored body fat! How’s that for a twist on what we’ve been taught? Not only that, but a lower fat diet is going to make it much harder to manage your hunger and cravings!
We need fat in our diet if we want to be healthy. Do you realize that your brain is about 60% fat? In addition to being an incredible fuel source and critical component of cognitive health, fats are components of every single cell in your body, they are required for the manufacture of hormones and they are essential for the utilization of many vitamins and antioxidants. If that’s not enough, you need fat for the proper growth and calcification of your bones, they keep your skin soft and supple, they support your immune system and help control your body’s inflammatory response. And that’s just the beginning!
For political and financial reasons we won’t go into (today), ignorance and greed led to the vilification of fat beginning in the 1970s and 80s. The food industry seized the incredible financial opportunity and flooded the market with low-fat and fat-free alternatives. These alternatives were loaded with artificial ingredients and sugar to replace the flavor and mouth feel the fat had been providing. It’s no coincidence that between 1980 and 2008 obesity in adults more than doubled and extreme obesity more than tripled.
We’ve been told to avoid dietary fat and cholesterol to reduce our risk of heart disease. People in positions of authority in medicine and politics have insisted that fat consumption increases the risk of heart disease and dietary cholesterol increases serum cholesterol. We’ve been convinced that dietary fat triggers inflammation and disease. Fat intake is not to blame for any of those things.
So if dietary fat isn’t to blame for heart disease, what is? The short answer is inflammation and oxidation, which are most significantly influenced by insulin (a result of excessive carbohydrate consumption) and cortisol (a result of chronically elevated insulin and physical or emotional stress). I promise, I’ll talk much more about this part another time…
There’s no doubt that there are in fact good fats and bad fats. The bad fats, however, are not saturated fats from animal products. The bad fats are these toxic, plastic fats (trans fats) made in factories and highly unstable fats from crop oils like canola and soybean. They are chemically altered, foreign to our bodies and wreak havoc inside us. They have been linked to just about every disease you can think of. The FDA is now requiring that trans fats be labeled on food products, but there are loopholes. One of the biggest loopholes is that if a product contains 0.5 grams of trans fats per serving it can advertise and label the product as “trans fat free”. That is an issue not only because it’s an outright lie, but also because most people don’t limit themselves to one serving of these foods! They’re designed to make us eat more!
I have SO much more to say on this topic and of course you’re going to hear about it, but this is already getting long and writing this has made me crave bacon (so I’m gonna make some).
But to get you started, a great way to get started is to move away from low fat, chemically altered, processed food choices. When you emphasize whole foods direct from nature you’ll naturally increase your intake of quality, healthy fats. Let go of your fear of butter. Eat a fatty chicken thigh instead of always opting for the super lean breast. Have some bacon, for crying out loud. Add fat. Embrace it. Love it. And while you’re at it, please, please, please lay off the processed garbage!
